March 8, 2010

Landscapes of Quarantine



Landscapes of Quarantine opens tomorrow at New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture. Curated by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twiley, the interdisciplinary, group exhibition features work that emerged from an eight-week studio exploration into the spatial implications of quarantine.

Landscapes of Quarantine features new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine.



At its most basic, quarantine is a strategy of separation and containment—the creation of a hygienic boundary between two or more things, for the purpose of protecting one from exposure to the other. It is a spatial response to suspicion, threat, and uncertainty. From Chernobyl’s Zone of Exclusion and the artificial quarantine islands of the New York archipelago to camp beds set up to house HIV-positive Haitian refugees detained at Guantánamo and the modified Airstream trailer from within which Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins once waved at President Nixon, the landscapes of quarantine are various, mutable, and often unexpected.

The gallery’s opening event on Tuesday, March 9th will feature an inflatable storefront “prosthesis” designed by Jeffrey Inaba and Joseph Grima. Landscapes of Quarantine runs until April 17th. A couple preview images after the jump.

[Q-CITY: An Investigation (detail), 2010. Front Studio | Yen Ha, Michi Yanagishita, and Joshua Cummings. "Quarantine spaces are usually hidden: the sick and suspect are kept out of sight and out of mind behind closed doors or on remote islands. But is there a way to make quarantine visible, marbling it throughout the fabric of the city? What would the social, economic, infrastructural, and architectural implications of a “separate but equal,” city-wide distributed quarantine be? Front Studio’s investigation led them to consider the ethics of enforced segregation, the behavioral impact of economic incentives, and even the potential adaptive reuse of phone booths – all mapped onto the streetscapes of New York City." ]


[MAP 002 QUARANTINE, 2010. David Garcia Studio. "Though architect David Garcia is based in Copenhagen, when he read the “Landscapes of Quarantine” studio brief and online updates, he decided to participate at a distance by dedicating the 2nd edition of his MAP project to the architectural possibilities of quarantine. Garcia’s MAP presents a wealth of data, imagery, and ideas: it is both a reminder of the vast and variable terrains of quarantine, and an invitation to pick up a copy and join the design exploration yourself."]


Comments

2 Responses to “Landscapes of Quarantine”

  1. Ultum on April 8th, 2010 3:10 am

    Sounds interesting to me. I wanna check it out.

  2. kara cardinale on April 15th, 2010 10:08 am

    Interesting exercise in spatial relations but does it address the emotional mass fear about quarantine. Will this make quarantine an accepted event or just provoke a visceral attack reaction out of society.